Please Harder, Professor

Chapter 74

Sophie’s POV

My limbs feel heavy and disconnected, like they belong to someone else entirely. Whatever Lisette gave me hours ago is making the world feel underwater, my thoughts swimming through molasses instead of forming coherent plans for escape.

The chloroform has mostly worn off, but something else is in my system now—something that makes my tongue thick and my reactions sluggish even as adrenaline tries to sharpen my focus.

The wind on the rooftop cuts through my thin sweater like ice, making me shiver uncontrollably as the autumn evening settles around us.

My teeth want to chatter, but I clench my jaw against the sensation, refusing to give Lisette the satisfaction of seeing me completely helpless.

This can't be how it ends. Not here, not like this, with my baby dying with me because a woman can't accept that her obsession isn't love.

"Let's make this quick," Lisette says, moving toward me with deliberate calm as she begins working at the ropes binding my wrists.

"You don't have to do this," I slur, trying to focus on her face as she works methodically at the knots. "Dr. Vaughn, please, we can work something out. Whatever you want from Adrian, whatever you think I'm preventing…"

"What I want is impossible as long as you exist," Lisette interrupts, her voice eerily conversational for someone preparing to commit murder. "You represent hope to him, possibility, all the things that keep him from accepting what he really is."

She pulls the last of the rope away from my wrists, and I can feel circulation returning to my hands in painful prickles. The brief relief is overshadowed by the knowledge that being unbound means we're moving to the final phase of her plan.

The campus spreads out below us, lights beginning to twinkle in the windows as normal people go about their normal evening routines.

The distance to the ground makes my stomach lurch with vertigo, and I have to close my eyes against the dizzying drop.

Focus, I tell myself. Stay alert. Find an opportunity.

"Stand up," she commands, and her voice has taken on the authoritative tone she uses in lectures, like she's simply instructing a student to approach the whiteboard.

When I struggle to comply on my drugged, unsteady legs, she hauls me upright with surprising strength. Her grip is iron-tight around my upper arm, fingers digging in deep enough to leave bruises.

"That's it. Now we walk to the edge together. You're going to slip, you see. Tragic accident."

The rooftop edge looms only a few feet away, and each step toward it feels like walking through a nightmare where my feet won't obey my brain's desperate commands to run.

The wind whips my hair across my face, stinging my eyes and making everything blur together in a kaleidoscope of terror and determination.

I will not die like this. My baby will not die like this.

The thought becomes a mantra, cutting through the chemical haze with crystalline clarity. Whatever drugs are in my system, whatever fear is paralyzing my limbs, I refuse to let this be the end of our story.

"You know," Lisette continues conversationally as she forces me closer to certain death, "I've been planning this for months. Ever since I realized Adrian would never come back to me willingly. Some problems require permanent solutions."

"You're insane," I manage to whisper, though even to my own ears it sounds more like a plea than an accusation.

"I'm practical," she corrects with clinical detachment. "Adrian and I had something beautiful before you came along and poisoned it with your pathetic need for emotional connection. You turned him into something desperate and unpredictable."

Before she can proceed with her confession, the rooftop door explodes inward with a thunderous crash that echoes across the empty space like gunfire.

Adrian and Cassian tumble through the doorway, both of them breathing hard like they've been running through the entire building. Their eyes immediately locking onto the tableau of me standing near the ledge with Lisette's fingers digging into my arm.

Adrian's face contorts with pure rage when he sees our positions, the obvious intent, the proximity to certain death.

His storm-gray eyes lock onto mine with desperate intensity, and I see something there I've never seen before—genuine terror. Not anger, not possessive fury, but raw, paralyzing fear.

That look on his face tells me everything I need to know about his feelings, cutting through months of confusion and mixed signals with perfect clarity.

"Sophie," he says, his voice rough with barely controlled panic as he takes a careful step forward, then stops when Lisette's grip tightens on my arm. "Are you hurt? Did she hurt you?"

I can see him fighting every instinct to rush toward me, his hands clenched into fists at his sides as he forces himself to stay still. The distance between us, maybe twenty feet, might as well be an ocean for how desperately he wants to close it.

"I've been better," I slur through the drug haze, trying to sound more coherent than I feel. “The hospitality here is terrible, and I definitely didn't pack the right outfit for rooftop dining."

Despite everything, the mortal danger, the drugs in my system, the woman holding me captive, I manage a weak smile that's meant to reassure him.

Adrian lets out a short, nervous laugh that sounds more like a sob, but his eyes sparkle with relief and something that looks dangerously like adoration.

"Stop flirting right in front of me!" Lisette snaps, her voice cracking across the rooftop like a whip. "This is exactly what I'm talking about! Even now, even in this situation, you can't stop looking at her like she's the only person in the world!"

"Let her go, Lisette," Adrian says, his voice deadly calm in the way that usually precedes violence. "Right fucking now."

But Cassian raises a restraining hand, stepping slightly in front of Adrian like he's afraid of what might happen if Adrian charges forward and startles Lisette into pushing me over the edge.

"Lisette, please," Cassian says carefully, his voice carrying the tone of someone trying to talk down a wild animal. "Put her down. You promised me—you said you'd leave Sophie alone and only deal with Adrian!"

The words hit me like ice water cutting through the drug-induced fog.

"What?" I whisper, my blood turning cold despite the chemicals dulling my system. "Cassian, what are you talking about?"

"You made a deal with her?" Adrian hisses through clenched teeth, his attention snapping from me to Cassian with murderous intensity. "You son of a bitch, you knew she was unstable and you made some kind of arrangement?!"

"I was protecting you!" Cassian protests, his careful composure finally cracking under the weight of revelation and guilt. "I thought if I could redirect her focus away from Sophie, if I could make her think she was getting revenge against Adrian instead—"

But I can barely process his betrayal through the drug's fog, the way my thoughts keep sliding away from coherent anger into confused hurt. Cassian made a deal with Lisette.

The man who'd held my hair while I threw up, who'd promised to raise another man's child, had conspired with the woman now trying to murder me.

"I don't care what happens to me anymore." Lisette laughs, and the sound carries manic energy that makes the air around us crackle with danger.

Her grip on my arm tightens, and I can feel her pulling me another step closer to the edge. And then—

"Say hello to the audience, you sick bitch."

Everyone turns as Cleo bursts through the rooftop doorway like an avenging angel, her phone raised high and obviously recording everything.

Thank God. The relief is so intense it's almost painful.

Ayden appears beside her, already on a call with his phone pressed to his ear, his voice carrying authority I've never heard from him before.

"Police are on their way," Ayden announces, his voice carrying across the rooftop with perfect clarity. "Building's surrounded. There's nowhere to run, Dr. Vaughn."

The sound of sirens begins to wail in the distance, growing closer with each passing second.

Through my drugged haze, I manage a weak smile as I look directly at Lisette's shocked, furious expression. "You didn't think I was such an idiot as to trust you without preparing for the setup, did you?"